For many individuals,
quiltmaking has served as an important mechanism to cope with oppressive
experiences. Barbara Hogan, for instance, was held for years as
a political prisoner in South Africa during apartheid. Now a member
of the South African parliament, she says “I think I would
have gone crazy all those years in prison if we did not have our
quilting.” Some individuals make quilts that show their memories
or feelings about personal experiences with human rights violations;
this activity often helps them to work through and heal emotional
scars and to record and tell their stories to others.

The quilt refers to mathematics teacher Pederson’s own personal
story of escape from domestic violence. She said, “It has
not been easy for me to reveal this, but making the quilt allowed
me to close a chapter.”

Dowedeswell explains more: “The title refers to the fact
that alcohol fuels a lot of domestic violence. The time immediately
after, or before, social occasions is often the catalyst. The warm
spectrum colors on the outer part of the quilt portray the bright
exterior victims often show the world when everything on the inside
is dark. The spiral background shows the feeling of being sucked
down into a black pit of despair. Reducing the size of the words
as we read the story depicts the shrinking of one's spirit and the
feeling of smallness and insignificance. The cross shape, for others,
may represent the death of a family member of the death of the relationship;
for Helen it is the death that could have occurred (but, thankfully,
didn't). The cross itself and the edge treatments illustrate some
of the methods of physical abuse that are used. The first three
words of the story hint at a solution: 'Please Stop Hitting'."

This quilt was one of two top prize winners in a juried exhibition
held in 2007 at New Zealand's National Quilt Symposium in Palmerston
North, New Zealand under a thematic category, sponsored by the New
Zealand Human Rights Commission, in which entrants were asked to
consider human rights abuses, their effects, and possible healing.
The quilt was subsequently included in the Content May Offend exhibition,
organized by the Human Rights Commission and the School of Education
at the University of Waikato, New Zealand.

This quilt was one of two top prize winners in a juried exhibition
held in 2007 at New Zealand's National Quilt Symposium in Palmerston
North, New Zealand under a thematic category, sponsored by the
New Zealand Human Rights Commission, in which entrants were asked
to consider human rights abuses, their effects, and possible healing.
The quilt was subsequently included in the Content May Offend
exhibition, organized by the Human Rights Commission and the School
of Education at University of Waikato, New Zealand. As Human Rights
Commissioner Rosslyn Noonan says, “the winners truly
bring home how a traditional domestic art can become a powerful
medium for the important message that to be free from violence
is a human right we should all cherish.” Cecily Gordon,
a psychotherapist and one of the makers of this quilt, provided
this statement on a separate cloth: "This quilt is for
the hundreds of children and women who have told me their stories.
It’s about bringing these stories home to Palmerston North
[a town she lived in for 20 years] where they began."

In 1982 Barbara Hogan was a thirty-year-old post-graduate student
working part-time for the Environmental Development Agency in
South Africa and an ardent member of the African National Congress
(ANC), the anti-apartheid political party, She was detained in
1982 for sending labor related material out of the country on
behalf of the ANC and, after being interrogated, ill-treated and
held in solitary confinement for one year she was charged with
treason, Hogan admitted ‘furthering the aims of a banned
organization’ but denied the charge of treason. The judge,
however, found her guilty of high treason and sentenced Hogan
to ten years in jail; Hogan was the first white woman to be tried
for treason under apartheid and the first individual in South
Africa to be tried for treason in a case that didn't involve violence
against the State. She served seven years of her sentence and
was released from prison in 1990 only when the South African government
lifted the ban on involvement in the ANC.

After her first year of solitary confinement during which she
was only allowed a Bible and a book of poetry, Hogan was allowed
to take a correspondence study course from UNISA (University of
South Africa), to read other books, and to take up a craft. She
taught herself how to quilt in the English pieced paper method,
using torn out pages from her correspondence study books for the
backing of the pieced blocks. Her warders chose and delivered
fabric to her. She was still working on this quilt when, in 1990,
the South African government lifted the ban on involvement in
the ANC and she was unexpectedly released from prison. Now a member
of the South African parliament, she says “I think I
would have gone crazy all those years in prison if I did not have
my quilting.”

Weya cloths are a distinctive style of appliquéd
pictorial textiles done by primarily Shona-speaking women in Weya,
an impoverished rural area in Zimbabwe located about 170km east
of the country’s capital, Harare. In 1987, art teacher Ilsa
Noy was asked by the German Volunteer Service to devise an economic
development project to assist women in becoming financially self-sufficient.
Noy thought the women, already skilled in needlework, could make
narrative, pictorial scenes that could be sold to tourists. The
Weya textile project began with nine women; today cloths are produced
by hundreds and sold by artists who travel to marketplaces and through
galleries and traders around the world. This appliqué was
acquired in Harare.

Artists chose stories or themes that reflect their
experiences, beliefs, and attitudes. This piece tells the sad story
of a woman (possibly Sarai Mugare) who hung herself after her husband
beat her and left her for a second wife. A small piece of paper
in the pocket of one of the panels provides more detailed description:
1) John was married but he fall for a girl; 2) The girl was pregnant
and she eloped, with auntie's company; 3) When the wifes [sic] were
staying, one day they fought for their husband (shanje); 4) John
loved the young wife most so he hit the older wife; 5) One day when
John and his young wife were resting behind the hut, the older wife
thought of running away; 6) On her way she turn to hear her life,
then in the thick forest she committed suicide [with the word Sarai
Mugare].

"Born into a social system that deemed her and millions
like her
chattel, the nameless, formerly enslaved woman in the central
image of this quilt endured what seems unendurable. If her
walls could talk, perhaps they would tell us how she fought to
outlive a system that owned her life, then struggled through the
dark years that followed to build a home and a future."